A new "manifesto" trailer from Guild Wars 2 features the ArenaNet team explaining how MMOG lovers and haters alike should check out their upcoming MMORPG sequel, also showing off some fairly epic footage. They discuss the game's art style, its absence of repetition and grinding, how they are not building the same MMOG as all the others, and how everything in the game is centered around the player. The embedded version of this clip follows.

The Half Elf wrote on Aug 10, 2010, 19:23:Ok the movie is awesome. The question is CAN they pull this off ingame?

Yes. Blizzard is pulling it off to a large degree in Cataclysm. Entire sections are phased and instanced for you, but not the entire game. I think Arenanet is going to take phasing and instancing to the next level, because that's the only true way to deliver meaningful experiences in an MMO. Which begs the question. If they go overboard on phasing and instancing will this game suffer from the same instancing GW had? People thought GW was an MMO for a long time when it was clear to me it was just a glorified matchmaking service. They keep saying this game will be persistent but how much of it will be? It'll be interesting to see how they pull this off with no monthly fees.

Anyhow I've seen more in-game scenery and combat footage in this trailer than all SWTOR trailers combined! The sad thing is this looks as good as the SWTOR CGI cinematics! And that dragon's entrance! Wow! Talking about epic. Why can't Deathwing make an entrance like that?! I'm now moving GW2 above SWTOR on my want this.

However... None of what I heard sounds new... I've been hearing these same promises for half a decade, and yes... Some games have been making steps forward...

And lastly, while I enjoyed the trailer, I expected the game to look better... And a few of the renderings looked downright crappy, though I mostly mean that on an individual, too-damn-shiny, model per model basis...

I am, however, going to take a look at the release date, and I'm expecting to pick it up (at launch), assuming I'm not too busy when at that time...

I'm trying to hate this, but i cannot find any elves/orcs and common fantasy annoyances. I think i might pick this up, i saw some futuristic stuff in this trailer but i really tend to hate fantasy games.

Wicked ending... This game is looking more and more ambitious. I'm still undecided if that's a good thing, but it's starting to come together quite nicely.

I can see some risks in areas of the game which the original did not have, such as:* The game is much bigger (level 80...), so risk of not having the complete game polished at release (ala AoC after the starting areas).* Hyping the "characters effect the world" thing too much - obviously there's going to be some form of instancing to work around the fact that you can't have only 1 character saving the village.

Given their experience with the original GW, the following should be a given:* PVP* Combat* Graphics* And tying the above 3 is the game running smoothly